


Jakku Birds With Broken Wings

by idrilhadhafang



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Eventual Finn/Rey/Rose Tico, Minor Kylo Ren/Rey, Minor Poe Dameron/Ben Solo, Movie: Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Movie: Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Multi, Not really Reylo, One-sided Kylo Ren/Rey, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Rey Needs A Hug, Slightly Reylo, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-20
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-08-05 00:27:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16357112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilhadhafang/pseuds/idrilhadhafang
Summary: Kylo wasn’t the one for her. But maybe two others are...





	Jakku Birds With Broken Wings

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Unrequited Love/Pining
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing.

She sees the young man in Kylo’s mind when she first drives him out.   
  
It’s an effort, almost a tug of war in a way, Kylo trying to force his way into her mind to take the last piece of the map, her resisting with all she has. She may just be a scavenger, but she invested in this to the last, and she’s not going to let this monster win. And then something gives. Just like that, something gives.   
  
She sees the man. Curly-haired, with classically handsome features. From the snippets of memory she sees, he seems almost idealized, glowing in nature. He’s beautiful and kind and witty, and a younger Kylo knew that he could never quite be his. She sees him leaving that same man — Poe — behind on Yavin IV the night he destroyed the Temple, and making promises he couldn’t keep.   
  
Training. Perfecting his skills to be ever better. And all the while, worrying about if he would ever be good enough, except for Kylo Ren, good enough wasn’t good enough. He needed perfection. As strong as Vader, stronger if possible.   
  
She hates him. She pities him. Maybe pity is just a sliver of what she feels.   
  
“You,” she says. “You’re afraid...that you’ll never be as strong as Darth Vader!”  
  
Ren withdraws, clearly in shock, almost like he’s been burned. Like someone who touched something burnt by Jakku’s sun. Rey watches as he leaves, pulling the mask back on for the moment and seeming almost vulnerable. A heart that’s still broken.   
  
***  
  
“Who was he?” she manages to ask him, the night before she goes to the Mirror Cave. They’re sitting on the same spot where Kylo told her about what Luke nearly did to him, and there’s a fire going. Kylo is thankfully not shirtless this time around — Rey’s almost embarrassed to admit that he’s not badly shaped. He’s nothing like the scavengers on Jakku, she knows that much — they were always rail thin, but Kylo is quite muscled and built like a tank. Thankfully, he’s clothed. He actually apologized for being shirtless earlier, which is probably the first apology he’s given over something relatively minor in comparison.   
  
“Who?”  
  
“The man. Poe Dameron. I saw him when I...blocked you from my mind.”  
  
There’s an awkward silence. Kylo is clearly reflecting on his first failure in the interrogation room. Then, “I lost him.”  
  
“You gave him up, you mean.” Rey can’t help but feel a twinge of jealousy. She shouldn’t feel jealous. And yet here she is.   
  
Jealousy hurts. It’s like a gnawing of teeth against your heart, a sort of hunger that can’t quite be satisfied.   
  
“He means nothing to me,” Kylo says, and his voice shakes a bit. “If that comforts you.”  
  
Rey shakes her head. “Liar.” She means it this time. “A bad liar at that.”  
  
Silence.   
  
“What was he like?” Rey can’t believe that she’s having a conversation with Kylo that isn’t just exchanging blows, but she can’t help but be curious.   
  
“A better man than I could hope to be.”  
  
Rey supposes that’s a low bar, and yet she can’t help but pity him. She remembers how he said it was too late for him on the bridge to his father. She wonders how long he’s believed that he’s a monster. Was Ben Solo a monster? When is a monster not a monster, she supposes.   
  
“Almost everyone believed it except Han Solo and Poe.” Kylo says.   
  
She winces, for more than one reason. “Why do you call him Han Solo?”  
  
“It’s his name.”  
  
“He was your father.”  
  
“I know.” A beat. “I am good as family-less, in the end."  
  
Rey can’t help but feel an uncomfortable pang of pity long after the connection cuts.  
  
***  
  
In the end, she can’t help but feel like they’re bizarrely alike. Cut off from their families, injured in their ways. They’re Jakku birds with broken wings, needing to be patched up. Maybe that’s why she begins to love him. Because they are mirror images in some ways, if twisted, and Rey supposes she can’t hate a part of herself.  
  
And there is good in him. Small, but ever a glow inside. Rey supposes that she can’t overlook that.   
  
After she visits the Mirror Cave, when they touch hands, she sees flashes of what could be. The war over. Kylo, reunited with his family, with Poe — and she can’t help but cry. Half with relief, because everyone’s at peace at last, because Kylo’s at peace, he’s Ben Solo again, and half with sadness, because in the end, for all she’s starting to feel about Kylo, he will never feel the same. Some people aren’t meant to be. Rey likes to think of herself as a realist, but for a moment, she believes...  
  
Just a moment. A moment’s enough to take her this far to the Supremacy. To defy Luke, freeing herself from how he treats her.   
  
A moment’s enough to make her plead with Ben when the dam holding back his anger and pain fully breaks. A moment’s enough to, when she finally gets away from Leia on the Falcon, to cry in private, for a boy who could not be saved, and a heart he’s broken. Breaking the remnants of the link is like amputating a limb, not as bad as being killed, but stars, she feels so stupid, so naive.  
  
***  
  
Time passes. This bird’s broken wing heals. Finn isn’t angry with her when he finds out the truth. “You were tricked,” Finn says. “It would have happened to just about anyone. There’s so many things wrong with Ren, but none with you.”  
  
Rose is awake from her coma, and she agrees with Finn. “You meant a great deal to him, you know,” she says. “I can see why."  
  
Rey nods. “He meant a great deal to me too.” Finn still does. She hasn’t forgotten him, deep in her bones, deep in her heart.   
  
***  
  
Being part of a threesome is new, but not unwelcome. Rey feels like she’s right where she belongs, actually. Rose is a wonderful woman, cheerful and kind and brave even after all she’s gone through. Maybe her time with Kylo was a necessary practice run, to show her that in the end, she’d pitied him, felt compassion for him and loved a concept, but not all of the man. All of the man is different than some of the man. She doesn’t hate him anymore; she mostly pities him, and mourns what he could have been. But she has Finn and Rose, and they mean the galaxy to her.  
  
She can only hope that Kylo finds his way home. One day, if not today. There is still some good left in him, a fire waiting to start somewhere inside him, no matter what.


End file.
